YES !
and it was about time…and since music is often anticipating bigger social events…all leaderships will soon be crumbling.

the rockstar biz didn’t encourage to produce better music…but only very repetitive and predictable formulas.
most of the creative heads of our age (not just musicians) have been struggling to survive and to keep their art free…and eventually got killed when they become too famous and influential.

Mattbot…your reference to W.Benjamin is spot on…and says it all.

’information is not knowledge. knowledge is not wisdom. wisdom is not truth.truth is not beauty. beauty is not love. love is not music.
….music is the best…’ – frank zappa

Of course I think there are other things in life besides money! I obliquely talked about “culture currency” or the social value in which others hold one in esteem. Frankly, I think the entire discussion all of us have been participating in here is grounded in our secret unspoken desire to be the next big “rockstar.” I really think that’s an increasing unlikely scenario for anyone which is economically unsustainable. We should all just get used to the possibility of playing music for our own enjoyment and the enjoyment of those who actually show up in person to listen. We shouldn’t get too upset about this, it’s been the reality of most musicians all along. It’s the mirage of the excess and riches of the rock-n-roll fantasy that’s crumbling.

Yes, the current state of consumer/capitalism didn’t hit full swing until the post-WWII but it had its genesis in during the renaissance.

Yes, I agree music is very irrational and people have still paid for it. What’s even stranger is the lengths people will still go through to make it!

Industry progress against piracy? Pirate Bay is still up and running by the way: http://thepiratebay.org/search/nin/0/99/0

Even if it was taken down, it would be like ripping a phonebook to destroy the telephone system. Since it is making money off music (and movies and ebooks, and software, etc), I suspect it will end up in more or less its current form owned by some mutli-corporation conglomerate with a profit sharing deal. Currently, that would be Swedish ad agency Global Gaming Factory X AB.

Independent artists should expect their work to still be available as a free torrent online but shouldn’t expect to see any money from whomever the final owners will be.

As for record labels, I would argue that they are mostly middle men which don’t provide services worth the take of the proceeds they demand. They are an inficiency in the production chain and should be bypassed completely or greatly reduced in scope at the very least.

Which leaves us with our original problem of how an Independent musician can make a living doing this.

Music’s “aura”, the emotional response you get from listening to it, is baseless? I would argue that is all music has. Music has no practical, rational application. You can’t eat it, drink it or shelter under it. People don’t buy albums as investment assets.

I agree and have stated in my posts about that selling album based on it’s value as a scarce finite product is a failing proposition. But people will continue to spend money on things they are emotional attached to but don’t need. The entire American consumer/capitalism economy has been based on this since the end of WWII. Getting you invested in the “auras” of products you don’t need is the sole raison d’être for the entire PR industry. Trent Reznor just made $750,000 USD selling pretty packaging for an album he also released for free. You can convince people to do strange things with their money.

(And yes, I feel a bit dirty advocating this position… :/ )

I will make my point again, briefly and hopefully more clearly:

The value of a recording (physical or digital) has been lost. Value still exists in other products, services and experiences a musician can provide.

This is new territory to explore and it is in the interest of the musician to connect with their fans to find out just what it is that excites the listener.

As for piracy being unenforceable, you’re certainly correct in that media can always be copied (if you can play it, you can copy it). But the industry has made progress in targeting the large torrent tracking sites (eg the pirate bay, oink).

The idea of music having an “aura” that compels people to go out and spend money, while sexy and appealing, is baseless. The average music listener will not spend $16 on an album if they can download it for free, as good as that album may be, or how pretty its packaging is.

@ mauxuam
sunshine and the beach aren’t made by hard working people. But I’m glad you acknowledge the worthlessness of music in today’s society..

CwF + RtB, baby!

I didn’t state much of an opinion to be wrong about, much less be dead wrong! It was more of a running out of the latest numbers. But I can certainly see how one invested in the old system of buying/selling recordings could find my post distressing.

I didn’t directly reference piracy, NIN or Radiohead. I am writing specifically of the value-through-scarcity model of selling recordings. There is no physical barrier for making flawless copies of digital recordings and the means of reproduction are so pervasive that any effort to enforce the copyright can not be taken as credible deterrent. Should we start by banning the basic copy function of major computing operating system? There isn’t a single operating system that could run without that functionality. There are neither the resources nor public will to fine every teenager in the First World (and probably quite a few parents too) the thousands of dollar’s per infraction the copyright holders are entitled to by law. Pandora’s box has opened. The cat is out of the bag. That train has left the station.

Fortunately for musicians, there are other models through which music retains value. And in real market value which can be expressed in dollars. Such as music’s “aura”, to borrow a term from Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” (Which was written in 1935 BTW, making this an old argument and scarcity a shaky ground for a business model.) Benjamin used the term “aura” to refer to the sense of awe and wonder one experiences in the presence of works of art. According to him, Mechanical Reproduction, that crotchety old grandfather to our Digital Reproduction, devaules the work by alienating it from its context. He argues that the value of the work is not in the object itself but its external attributes; its cultural currency. For example, most of us reading this probably pride ourselves for our musical taste. If a band is too casually accessible for mass consumption, even if they produce excellent music, it devaules our own sense of musical superiority. (If I were to refer to NIN or Radiohead, I would do so at this time.) However, people will gladly part with their money to experience a work of art in such a matter that it directly impacts them, such as in the form of a live performance. This direct firsthand experience has pretty powerful cultural cache. (”I was there at the first Can show in Cologne!”) Musicians who leverage this value and learn to connect to their audience on a more direct level will still do well for themselves. Thanks to Twitter, I often have a better idea of what Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle had for lunch (strawberry tart) than I know what my own friends are up too. When he does something interesting, I feel like I’m already invested. (”I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band. I told him, “Don’t do it that way. You’ll never make a dime.”) And things like handmade packaging has value not just from its scarcity but as a totem fetish which provides a direct line of exchange between the fan and the artist.

Getting worked up on blaming a particular band for destroying the economics of the musical industry isn’t really factual, fair or productive. We are all probably more guilty of picking it apart one download at a time than anything Thom Yorke or Trent Reznor ever did. I think the energy is better spent on finding new ways to succeed since we all seem to agree the old ways will no longer work.